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Glite Dictionary
🕊️ Freedom or margin ⛵ Sideways drift
leeway

leeway

1 6.5
A sideways movement of a ship caused by wind or current
  • noun
  • /ˈliːˌweɪ/
  • Specialized
translation icon : deriva
  • The sailors adjusted the sails to counteract the leeway caused by the strong winds.

Examples

  • The pilot factored in his observations of wind, current, and leeway, and basically took an educated guess.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • But large ships do not sail in a straight line due to leeway, the effect of the wind pushing the ships hull sideways.

  • The defense plays a massive amount of snaps because of the offense's inability to sustain drives, and no defense can endure for an entire game without giving up some leeway.

    Blog text (3)

  • There was heavy surf along a hollow in the shoreline, and steering somewhat to windward to correct our leeway, I hoped to pass parallel to the reefs and find an opening.

    Fiction book (1991)

  • During the flight, the pilot had to account for the leeway resulting from the unexpected currents.

  • Navigating through the storm, the captain was carefully monitoring the leeway of the ship to stay on course.

How Far

driftage
  • Specialized
8.6
leeway
  • Specialized
1 6.5
to drift
331 2.9

Surface Forms

leeway singular
leeways plural

Morphology

leeway = lee + way (transparent) = lee + way

The nautical sense directly combines 'lee' (sheltered side) and 'way' (movement/direction), so the meaning is directly derivable from the components.

Etymology

Leeway is a sailing word from lee ('shelter from the wind') and way ('path' or 'space'). Sailors used it for the sideways drift of a ship toward the sheltered side, so leeway here means how far a ship moves off its course and must be corrected.